Disgraced former rider holds onto his Sydney third place, for now at least

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that it must wait until Lance Armstrong has been formally sanctioned by the International Cycling Union (UCI) before it can decide whether to strip him of his bronze medal, according to the Daily Telegraph. The American - who has been officially stripped of his seven Tour de France victories - took third place in the time trial at Sydney 2000, behind US Postal Service teammate Viatcheslav Ekimov of Russia and Germany’s Jan Ullrich; since it falls outside the normal eight-year statute of limitations, stripping him of one of the few trophies he still holds on to is complicated.

The IOC Executive Board formally stripped four track and field athletes of their medals won at Athens 2004 today, after further analysis of their stored samples resulted in ‘adverse analytical findings,” but confirmed that Armstrong’s case has yet to be settled.

''Even though the UCI has stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles, they haven't yet formally sanctioned him and there are legal technicalities,'' an IOC source told Telegraph Sport, meaning that - for now, at least - Armstrong is still officially the bronze medallist from the Sydney 2000 time trial.

Since Armstrong was officially declared guilty of being the centre of “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen” - after declining to offer any defence to the charges brought by United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) - he has been stripped of all of his results since August 1st 1998. He has kept his 1993 US and World titles, his 1995 Clásica San Sebastián, 1996 Flèche Wallonne, two Tour de France stages and a number of other results, which were from before he suffered from testicular cancer.

He has lost virtually everything since his comeback from cancer but, at least technically, Armstrong remains an Olympic medallist.